Alteration of African hair tells a story of self-loathing

Culture is everything. But paradoxically culture is also nothing. Culture is often resilient. But it’s also as fickle as shifting sands of Lamu. Culture can be both dynamic and static. But it’s often more dynamic than static. Culture is the accumulation of a people’s wisdom. But it’s also the sum total of a people’s foolishness. There’s good culture, and there’s bad culture. Good culture can be vitiated by bad culture. That’s true although modernity draws a generally linear progression from low culture to high culture. Today, I want to interrogate these truisms by taking my proverbial scissors to the torment of black women and African hair. I know I will catch some flak, but so be it.

Culture, like virtually everything, is man-made. Much of what we perceive — hear, see, touch, smell, and taste — is man-made. So is much of what we think. Most of our world is socially constructed. We literally make things up as a human civilization. But what we “make up” is what we call civilization. That means virtually nothing is truly essential. That is nothing has an immutable or indefinitely fixed core. Thus nothing is innately really bad, or good. What’s good today can be bad tomorrow. But this does not mean that anything goes. No — we punish, or socially disapprove, conduct that deviates from accepted norms. We pass laws to protect our civilization. Culture can come from below, or above.